Cannes: Design gets its Lion

It was always going to be a gamble. And when an economic downturn looms,
the decision to launch a new competition in a congested awards market
has to be questionable, to say the least.

Still, the reception to this year's inaugural Design Lions at Cannes
appears to have justified the organisers' faith. They may have waited 55
years to open the door to design, but the influx of entries has entailed
adding three judges to the existing 13-strong panel just to cope with
the workload.

The debate over the inclusion of design has been going on for some time,
and seriously for the past three years. It pre-dated even the launch of
the most recent category, promo, which was added to the roster in 2006.
In fact, design might have been launched last year, but the organisers
had second thoughts: "We pulled back because, when we launch a new
category, we need to be absolutely sure that it makes sense," Philip
Thomas, the chief executive of the Cannes Festival, says.

"Although we'd had many conversations with the advertising industry, we
needed to ensure that the design industry also felt that it was
something that they would support. Once we'd gathered all that
information, we made a decision to go for it."

Cannes sets itself a minimum benchmark of about 600 entries for a new
category. After talks with the industry, however, it raised its sights
with design to 900. At the time of writing, it looks set to exceed 1,000
by a fair stretch.

So who has entered? Well, familiar names from the UK include Mother,
Pemberton & Whitefoord, Brand Union and a host of others. And their
reasons for doing so are quite clear.

Christian Schroeder, the chief executive of Lambie Nairn, says: "Cannes
will provide a showcase for design as an industry in terms of its
importance in the overall branding marcoms arena, and I think it also
allows people from outside the immediate industry to see there are
opportunities to work alongside one another.

"I've always found it a shame that everyone's always so desperate to
maintain their piece of the pie at a creative or a strategic level that
where there are opportunities to collaborate and work together on
providing the best possible solutions for clients and for our own
revenue streams, those are sometimes neglected."

Glenn Tutssell, the executive creative director of Brand Union, chafes
at the cost, but is clear that Cannes has a cache of quality. "It costs
a mortgage to go out there, but has the potential to have a very high
standard." A thumbs up, then. So what is that makes others decide to sit
on the fence?

"It's great that design gets recognised, I suppose," Richard Murray, a
director at Williams Murray Hamm, says, "but you have to ask if this is
a sort of cynical way of getting more entry fees. The world doesn't
really need another design award scheme; there are so many out
there."

Another, Conran Design Group, says cost is just one reason for holding
fire. "We concentrate on awards that can demonstrate tangible results or
benefits to clients," Richard Stayte, its creative director, says. "This
can either be through using proven sales metrics, like the Design
Business Association, or where an idea has been executed across
disciplines by partner companies."

While design agencies will be watching what goes on at Cannes with
interest, the awards preceding it, D&AD, claim to have seen an overall
increase of 5 per cent this year in the physical pieces of work that are
individually judged. That has been achieved, however, with no price
rises and, indeed, a reduction across many of the categories to make
them more accessible.

D&AD's chief executive, Dara Lynch, is realistic about the Cannes move:
"We hope that having put design into Cannes, it will only benefit us by
raising the relevance of design - particularly in getting the message
out to the client community."

She also recognises that, in terms of design entries, times are tough.
"Next year, and the year after, we're bracing ourselves for a different
kind of environment. I think it's potentially quite tough to be
launching at this point in time, when we know that the industry is
looking at its budgets very tightly."

The international factor at Cannes is the big imponderable. Some 10 per
cent of design entries are from the UK, which is consistent across all
categories, while just two members of the 16-strong judging panel are
from these shores. British design has a reputation to protect - but
there's no guarantee that it will have an edge.

"That's what I'm interested in seeing," Callum Lumsden, a creative
director at Small Back Room, says. "I think the London design agencies
that think they're the best in the world might get a kick up the
backside. And wouldn't that be good? Because I'm certainly coming up
against American, Spanish, Chinese and Singapore companies doing some
great stuff."

There's no denying that the British contingent fancies its chances. Its
exponents claim that this country has a fantastic heritage and a
reputation for edgy and leading work, and that "there is no such thing
as 'too British'".

A more realistic view is that success cannot be guaranteed. It wouldn't
be much of a contest if it were. But all must hope standards will be so
high that the Cannes Design Lions becomes a worthwhile competitor in its
own right.

- Rodney Fitch, chairman and chief executive of Fitch Worldwide

I imagine the organisers would claim Cannes endeavours to mirror the
wider communications industry. As such, the festival, starting with
advertising, has come to showcase film, TV, radio and, in recent years,
has embraced digital. Since design has always been at the heart of this
work, its absence as a separate category might have been because it was
taken for granted.

But we all know the tectonic plates of the communications industry are
shifting. A new order is emerging, one where consumers are influenced by
design like never before. Today, many brands are built around design and
no serious product launch, business plan or campaign is likely to
succeed that does not possess a meaningful design strategy.

At long last, Cannes has recognised this. I believe the festival now
understands the role of design as being more important to the consumer
than much conventional communications activity. This is because design
is close to consumers' hearts: they can feel it, use it, be it,
recognise good and bad. For aren't they all design critics? And inside
all of us is a designer trying to get out. Not a lot else at Cannes can
make this claim.

So now there are the Design Lions, and the response from the world
design community to these inaugural Lions has been wonderfully
enthusiastic. And so it should have been, since to see our work
alongside other brilliant award-winning creative work is important:
measuring our work alongside other disciplines helps put what we do into
context.

For the festival itself, I'm bold enough to suggest it will be a
revelation, not least because it will put a whole new range of work on
view, submitted by designers from all over the world. And Cannes will
surely be the better for it.

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